History

Hey Boone, so I was brainstorming some ideas for this issue and I've created some mockup wireframes for you to envision.

In the "create a paper.jpg" I used the Forums landing page as a general template. Because there is no current way to create a new paper from the Group Papers tab, and the Forums "Post new topic" button works well, I thought this could remain the same.

Planning ahead and still using the Forums template, I added the search bar in case there are a numerous papers added to a group at any given time as well as the adding the activity bar in blue so group member can be made aware of updates. The way the papers are displayed is how they are currently displayed in the Papers tab, I thought it was a clean look and wanted to incorporate that. I added a button for users to select how they'd like to view the papers as I think that's standard. I looked at the Docs page and if you'd like to maybe do something like that as far as how the papers will be displayed with: Title, Author, Created, Last edited, etc. I think that could work too, I just wanted to add as little as possible to give the display a clean feel.

In the "empty state.jpg" I wanted us to have the option to view what the Papers tab would look like when there was nothing in it. For this, I used the Forums again as my template. In the yellow bubble, I give users the option to learn how to link a paper they've already created to a group using the help tab that's already in place: http://codex.commons.gc.cuny.edu/social-paper-sharing-and-following/.

I hope this helps with this issue, let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Thanks, Paige! These are some really valuable suggestions. Some initial thoughts:

Because there is no current way to create a new paper from the Group Papers tab, and the Forums "Post new topic" button works well, I thought this could remain the same.

Yeah, I like this. How does someone get to be "last edited"? Is this the last person to attach a paper to the group? The last person to edit a paper attached to the group? The last person to comment on a paper attached to the group? Or the last person to have done any of these things?

The search bar and pagination elements seem sensible to me. If we're going to implement them, we should do it across the various Papers directories: Group > Papers, Member > Papers, and the Social Paper Hub. In fact, some of this is already in place on the Hub http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/papers/, designed in such a way as to match the other top-level directories (sites, groups, etc). Can you take a step back and think about the intersection of these interfaces? It may be that we decide to go with a slightly different interface in the case of the top-level hub than what we do in the case of groups/members, but I think we should be systematic in any case.

The newest/oldest switch seems like a good idea in broad terms, but I have a couple questions/thoughts about it:- What are we sorting by? Date created? Date edited? Date commented? Date "active" (some combination of the previous three)?- Jamming the button at the top of the page in this way seems a bit haphazard. Are there other places in our interface where we allow ordering to be reversed in this way? Docs allows it through clickable table headers, a mechanism unavailable here.I guess my gut reaction here is that if we can't find a natural place to put the UI, then this may be a feature we set aside until we have sitewide conventions for this kind of orderby tool.

The "empty state" suggestion looks great to me. The one thing I'd suggest is coming up with better phrasing than "Already have a paper published?" - having a paper published means something very specific (and different) in the context of an academic network. Maybe instead we could have a message like "Link one of [your papers] to the group. [Learn how.]". The first link would go to the user's papers, the second to the codex page. And the whole yellow area would only be shown to users who have authored at least one paper. What do you think?

Yeah, I like this. How does someone get to be "last edited"? Is this the last person to attach a paper to the group? The last person to edit a paper attached to the group? The last person to comment on a paper attached to the group? Or the last person to have done any of these things?

While trying to keep things symmetrical, the "last edited" idea was directly from the group Forums "last updated" feature. I don't know how the team came to choose this for Forums but I figured that could remain the same, therefore I assume it could be as you said the last person to do any of the aforementioned things. We could change it to say "last updated" if "last edited" is to broad.

The search bar and pagination elements seem sensible to me. If we're going to implement them, we should do it across the various Papers directories: Group > Papers, Member > Papers, and the Social Paper Hub. In fact, some of this is already in place on the Hub http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/papers/, designed in such a way as to match the other top-level directories (sites, groups, etc). Can you take a step back and think about the intersection of these interfaces? It may be that we decide to go with a slightly different interface in the case of the top-level hub than what we do in the case of groups/members, but I think we should be systematic in any case.

I agree with you on this, I do think it's important to keep things symmetrical. As it stands, there are currently three different interfaces within the Academic Commons, you used: Main Tabs (like the Social Paper Hub), Members, and Groups. I believe we should design our interfaces as such, symmetrical but with variances. You mentioned the (mostly) symmetrical design across the Main Tabs is already in place and I believe that should remain. But in the wireframe previously attached, I designed that mockup to match the navigation already in place with Forums in an attempt to add symmetry within that Groups interface. For members interface, I would be happy to take a stab at that if you'd like to open that in a new ticket. I say this because the profile would probably not have as much data as that of the Groups interface and could be designed with simplicity. In the long run, I think it will be hard for us to design identical UI across the three interfaces since there is a clear separation amongst them now.

The "Newest to oldest" button was something I added in as a way of quick referencing the Docs interface. There are numerous filters in place for Docs and I was hoping to simplify that since there are filters such as "Freshness" in Forums and "Date Created" in Docs. I was hoping to kind of tie the two together but I agree with your input on this and this is something we can set aside for the time being.

The "empty state" suggestion looks great to me. The one thing I'd suggest is coming up with better phrasing than "Already have a paper published?" - having a paper published means something very specific (and different) in the context of an academic network. Maybe instead we could have a message like "Link one of [your papers] to the group. [Learn how.]". The first link would go to the user's papers, the second to the codex page. And the whole yellow area would only be shown to users who have authored at least one paper. What do you think?

I agree with you 100% on this one, thanks for your suggestion.

Thanks for all of your help Boone, let me know if there's anything else regarding this issue I can work on.

A lot of the interface elements you've pointed to in Forums were not decisions we explicitly made, but things we inherited from our forum software. Some of them, in turn, are standard UX conventions for forum software. So while I think it's really helpful to use them as inspiration for parallel interfaces, I don't think we need to be tied to them too closely.

That being said, I think the Forums interface is generally a bit easier to follow and use than the Docs interface. So if we're going to steal from one, let's go with Forums.

I suggest that we break your suggestions into three sections:

(a) improvements to "no papers" - We should go ahead with these changes, pretty much as you've mocked up, with some improved language about "publishing", as per our discussion above.

(b) General improvements to group > Papers that are either straightforward or high-impact, which should be implemented sooner rather than later. I'd suggest the following items for this list:- Add blue box to the top, as in Forums. Blue box will contain paper and comment count text, as well as "Create New Paper" button, but will not have "last edited by" (too complicated, and maybe not very helpful)- Add pagination text (Viewing x-y of z papers) and links. Use the same format as Forums.- Add Search box. Use the same format as Forums.

(c) General improvement to group > Papers that should be postponed, because of the difficulty of implementation and/or fairly small benefit:- "last edited by" for the blue box. IMO this is not necessary at all (I don't think it's adds any value in Forum either, and really I don't think the blue box adds much value in general, but that's a different discussion) but at the very least it should be low priority- asc/desc sorting. I like the idea but it will be hard to fit into the interface in a way that makes sense, especially since there are multiple kinds of sorting that are salient (created date, edited date, commented date)

If this plan sounds good, I'll spin off tickets for the items in (b) and (c) and keep the current one for improvements to the "no papers" view.

The plan as you outline it, Boone, sounds good to me. I think the prioritization levels are fair.Thanks to you both for working through this -- I'm excited to see a more robust Social Paper area in groups!

I don't know how I didn't note this earlier in the discussion, but it turns out that we don't actually show the Papers tab in groups if the group doesn't have any papers to show. I think we originally did this so as not to flood the nav menu with yet another unneeded tab. In order to make the current ticket testable, I removed this restriction - all groups now have the Papers tab, whether or not they have papers associated with them. Let me know whether you think this behavior should be changed.

I don't know how I didn't note this earlier in the discussion, but it turns out that we don't actually show the Papers tab in groups if the group doesn't have any papers to show. I think we originally did this so as not to flood the nav menu with yet another unneeded tab. In order to make the current ticket testable, I removed this restriction - all groups now have the Papers tab, whether or not they have papers associated with them. Let me know whether you think this behavior should be changed.

You're correct about our original reasoning for this decision, and I agree that it should be on for all groups now that there's a 'create new paper' button and not just a blank page if no papers have been linked to the group.

"Already have a paper published through the Social Paper tool? Learn how to link an existing paper to a group."I'm assigning to Sam for the next crack at this.

How about: 'You can also link your existing Social Papers to groups. Learn more on the Social Paper help page.'